From Stress to Success: Transforming Your Financial Habits

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Welcome to Money Roots, the podcast where personal finance gets personal.

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Each week, Amy and her guests dig deep into the world of finance, making it more approachable and understandable for everyone.

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No matter where you are on your financial journey, from savings and investments to budgeting and planning, we'll bring you practical advice, inspiring stories, and expert insights.

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We believe that everyone has the potential to grow a healthy financial future, and we're here to help you nurture it.

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So whether you're a financial guru or just starting to plant the seeds of your financial knowledge, this is the place for you.

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Get ready to uncover the tools and strategies that can help you thrive financially.

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So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode of Money Roots.

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Welcome to another episode of Money Roots.

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Today, we're going to continue the conversation about satisfaction.

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So in our first episode of: 2025

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So we're going to continue that to talk about now.

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Where's your satisfaction?

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And is the money that you're spending matching your values?

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This is an important topic because a lot of times lifestyle creep, as we call it, kind of gets into things.

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What we find is where we're spending our money isn't actually giving us the highest level of satisfaction in life or where our dollars are going.

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So we're going to talk a little bit about ways to explore that, because the first step in changing a habit is actually identifying the habit.

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So changes or improvements we make in any area of U.S.

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area of our lives often comes with financial implications, whether they're large, whether they're small.

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But the tool that I want to introduce to you today takes a look at all aspects of our lives.

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And I tend not to define these areas necessarily, I want you to define them.

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But it takes a look at all aspects of our lives to determine whether or not you're currently satisfied with those levels.

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There's several areas of life that we can talk about and begin to identify, and there might be some that you have a low level of satisfaction with, but you're okay with that.

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We're not here to judge what your level of satisfaction is.

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This is something for you to use as a tool, sort of bring to light where are you satisfied and where do you want to focus sometime being more satisfied.

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So this can help customize some financial strategies, because sometimes when people have gone through this exercise, they realize that there's an area in their life that they have very low financial satisfaction, but their Values in that particular area are very high.

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And, you know, when we're developing each individual's financial plan, it's like putting, you know, together pieces of a jug spot, jug jigsaw puzzle.

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Right?

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So it's unique to every particular client that we work with, and it's certainly unique to every person.

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We might have the same picture on the bo, but how we put the puzzle together could be very, very different.

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So this exercise that I want to walk through today actually gives you some of that guidance internally.

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And I want you to think about, once you finish this, I want you to come back to it and think about a couple of questions.

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One is, how was this exercise for you?

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Did you find it fun?

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Did you find it stressful?

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Like, how was it?

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And then also once you completed it, was there any insights that you had that was like, whoa, I didn't even realize that I felt that way, but that's where my finger went to click on the dot to form this.

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And we don't want you to actually think about this much.

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We want you to just, what's your first instinct?

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Where is this coming from?

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Were there any surprises?

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And then think about how you define the terms of each spoke.

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So I'm not going to define it for you.

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This is something you need to define, like, what does this mean to you?

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And then once you've done that, ask yourself the question, what are your levels of satisfaction with this?

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You could take a quick minute to journal the areas that you marked really high.

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Why?

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Why did you mark them high?

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What's contributing to that high level of satisfaction in these areas, what's going well in those?

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And then next move to the section that's maybe middle ground.

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Why did you mark them moderately satisfied?

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What would help raise the level of satisfaction in those areas?

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Can you think of any quick and easy solutions that could raise these areas by a point or two on the scale?

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Then tell me about the areas you've marked low satisfaction.

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And by me, I mean your journal.

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Tell us about the areas, or write in your journal about the areas that you've marked low level satisfaction.

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Was there ever a time when you marked them or would have marked them at a higher level of satisfaction?

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And, and if so, what's the difference between now and then?

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When do you have ideas on what would help increase your level of satisfaction in these areas?

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And if it's a low level of satisfaction and it's being very impactful in your plan, what's causing that?

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Then I want you to journal about what things bring you joy or are most important to you in each of these areas?

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Out of all of the items listed, which ones do you feel are priorities for you currently?

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Now, maybe your highest level of satisfaction is your top priority, and some of the areas that are low satisfaction might be low priority and.

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And down the road.

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And that's perfectly fin.

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What are you.

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What do you feel?

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Are limited resources preventing you from making improvements in these areas?

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Is that time?

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Is it energy?

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Is it money?

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And do you foresee any obstacles to improve in any of those areas?

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Because you know that that's helpful too.

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Like denoting any obstacles that could actually get in the way actually gives us the ability to plan or you the ability to plan for what those obstacles are.

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Sometimes the obstacle is here, not here.

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And so let's talk about what you think the obstacle is.

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So I'm going to share my screen for a brief second, just to kind of walk you through.

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So those of you that are listening on the podcast, you're obviously not going to be able to see my screen.

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You'll be able to hear my voice.

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But hop on over to YouTube to actually watch what it is that I'm demoing.

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And I'm going to have in the show notes, I'm going to have the link to YouTube and a link to actually complete this exercise.

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Okay, so if you're listening to this on the podcast, what we're looking at on the screen is these particular sections.

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Family, health, leisure, learning, inner growth, home, community, work, and finances.

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So when you're doing this exercise right here on the spoke, and again, you can't see this if you're listening to the podcast, but there's a spoke in front of me, you would click, how satisfied are you with your family?

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Again, you define family.

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So wherever you want to put the dot, no judgment.

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How satisfied are you with your health?

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What amount of leisure are you satisfied with?

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Is it up here?

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Is it down here?

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Where is it?

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Are you happy with the amount of learning that you're getting in your life?

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Are you happy with the amount of time for inner growth?

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How about home?

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How about the involvement within your community?

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And again, you define your involvement.

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Maybe you have no involvement in your community and you're perfectly happy with that.

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Maybe you have a lot of involvement in your community and it's too much.

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Are you satisfied with work?

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Can you define, Are you doing the work you want?

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Are you not doing it?

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Do you like the place you work?

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Do you want to not work there?

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Like, you define all of that, not me.

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And then finances, how happy are you with your finances.

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And for those of you not watching this on YouTube but listening to it in the podcast, after I clicked the last button on finances, all of those dots connected.

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Now, what I demoed was nothing personal.

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I just picked some different spots.

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But one of the things that it shows is that the wheel that is inside the wheel is actually not circular.

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There's a couple of flat spots.

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And it's those flat spots that we can come back to to see is it, you know, is there a reason is your life?

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And it may be it's okay.

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Like I said, there's nothing.

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We're not trying to judge this.

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This just gives you some ideas that you can kind of think about with regards to are your dollars matching your values?

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So this is just a tool to start to get you thinking along those lines.

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We hope that you enjoy this process.

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If you have a few minutes and you try this and it brings some light to your life or some ideas to your plate, I would love to hear it.

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Please feel free to contact us and, you know, share with us what you got out of this particular, I guess, exercise.

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clients starting in April of: 2025

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We need to pause at this point in time simply because of tax season coming up, but we would work with you more on an individual level if this is something that you would want to explore yourselves with some guidance from us.

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ke you on your own journey in: 2025

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Thank you everyone and we hope that you've enjoyed the show.

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You've been listening to Money Roots, your go to podcast for making personal finance accessible and approachable.

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Thanks for joining us today.

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Amy and her guests have enjoyed guiding you through the roots of your financial journey.

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Remember, whether you're planting new seeds of financial knowledge or nurturing the growth of your existing financial plans, Money Roots is here to support you every step of the way.

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Be sure to follow them on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram for more resources.

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And of course, subscribe to Money Roots wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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A big thank you to the sponsor, Rooted Planning Group, for making this show possible.

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At Rooted Planning Group, they're committed to helping you cultivate a thriving financial future.

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Until next time, keep growing your Money Roots.